Bakersfield College’s football program is going through a regular transition phase, and 2011’s team will start to take its shape over the next few months.
Head coach Jeff Chudy is intrigued by the potential of the incoming class of freshman, and is working hard to make sure that the process for local athletes to register at BC goes smooth for both parties.
Brian Burrell, a senior quarterback at Bakersfield High School, is expected to be at BC next semester.
Burrell threw for over 1,500 yards with 17 touchdowns and two interceptions, and rushed for 853 yards and 13 touchdowns during his senior season at BHS.
Burrell and his team also defeated Centennial quarterback and USC commit Cody Kessler in the Central Section Division 1 semifinal 37-20 last December. Burrell was responsible for five total touchdowns and nearly 400 yards in that game.
“I don’t like to single anybody out . but we’re excited with the group of high school seniors right now,” said Chudy. “We had the BHS guys up last week and we feel really good about the group of local talent.
“We’ve had quite a few schools come up and visit the campus,” said Chudy. “In the good ol’ days . the counseling department was able to go down to the campuses and dial in all the high school seniors. So, we’re having to do a lot of that on our own.
“We’re fortunate that we’ve got somebody like [Elizabeth Ochoa, the educational adviser for the athletics department], who does a great job working with the high school senior student athletes.”
More than 60 percent of last year’s team was freshman, and that team made the playoffs on an 8-2 record only to lose to Mt. San Antonio College in the first round.
“[The incoming freshman] have some big shoes to fill with the class that came in before them,” he said. “We’ve told them that ‘hey, hopefully you guys will have the same kind of work ethic of the guys that came in last year.’
“Ninety percent of them played when those guys were seniors, so they understand that they have big shoes to fill.”
Chudy is intent on making sure that there is competition at every position, and the local athlete pool is at the center of his attention.
The other thing Chudy and his staff are focused on is the turnover from a freshman-heavy team to a sophomore-deep team, and making sure that the sophomores departing have success after BC.
“In a perfect world you’d have more balance, but last year we had even more of a freshman-dominated team than most years,” Chudy said. “So we didn’t have as many sophomores leaving this year as we did the year previous.”
The national signing day, a day when student athletes sign letters of intent to various Division 1 schools, took place on Feb. 2.
Of all the sophomores parting from BC, seven players have signed with Division 1 schools since national signing day, with kicker Josh Gallington expected to become the eighth when he signs with Northern Illinois.
“We’ve got to get our guys out of here,” Chudy said of players moving up.
“It’s a work in progress, [Gallington] didn’t sign on the signing day for four-year colleges, but yet he’s going to be signing a letter of intent probably next week.
“So [the sophomores] will still be being placed throughout the spring, so our goal is to get every guy that is a sophomore that has to continue playing a spot somewhere.”